This morning, MIND Research Institute announced that the organization’s flagship program, ST Math, received two 2019 CODiE Awards:
For over 30 years, the SIIA CODiE Awards have honored thousands of software, education, information and media products for achieving excellence. Since the CODiE Awards is the only peer-recognized program in the business and ed tech industries, each CODiE Award win serves as incredible market validation for a product’s innovation, vision, and overall industry impact.
The Best Mathematics Instructional Solution for Grades PreK-8 category recognizes the best instructional product that offers deep and personalized learning experiences for students, supports standards alignment, and reflects current curriculum practice.
The Best Overall Education Technology Solution is awarded to the product that receives the highest scores of all of the products, from both rounds of judging. This includes 299 nominated products in 32 categories.
After we climbed off cloud nine, we got to thinking as a team about why we received that second award. What is it about ST Math that makes us stand so far apart?
We think it comes down to this: our amazing school, district, philanthropic, teacher, administrator, and student partners.
We work with our users each and every day to make ST Math better.
It is through their input that we refine objectives to make them more effective at building deep conceptual understanding.
And it is through working and playing alongside teachers, students, and families that we are able to develop and launch completely new products, like MathMINDs Games: South of the Sahara, storybook board games that combine math, history and literacy in a highly connected experience.
Simply put, without strong partnerships from our users and our donors, we would not have won these awards.
“These two CODiE awards really underscore the years of working with educators and students to make ST Math better,” said Matthew Feldmann, Vice President of Product at MIND. “It is amazing how many products are designed in a vacuum outside of real classrooms. Partnering with our schools ensures that we develop a product that is effective, usable, and valuable to educators.”
During the 2017-2018 school year alone, MIND team members spent over 413 user experience research hours working face-to-face with students, teachers and administrators to better understand how they use and would like to use ST Math. You can learn more about how we do that research on our podcast.
One of our core values at MIND is life-long learning. There is no better way to gather deep and true understanding than learning directly from the students and educators who use ST Math.
“Our students are at the heart of ST Math’s success, and these awards are recognition of their contributions,” continued Feldmann. “It’s these students’ success stories of becoming mathematical problem solvers prepared for the future that inspire all of our colleagues and partners to push the boundaries of what is possible in math education.”
To all 1.2 million students who used ST Math this year, we salute you!
To all 56,000 teachers who brought ST Math into their classrooms this year, we salute you!
And to all of our social impact partners who have invested in math education for PreK-8 and made it possible to bring ST Math to districts across the country, we salute you!
Thank you for making ST Math the best it can be.
Liz Neiman is Vice President of Engagement at MIND, leading the marketing team's plans and activities to promote MIND's initiatives and impact. Besides education and gaming, her interests include music of all kinds (from musical theater to heavy metal), cooking and baking, and fashion. Follow her on Twitter @lizneiman.
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